1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a computer program product, system, and method for providing access to documents of friends in an online document sharing community based on whether the friends' documents are public or private.
2. Description of the Related Art
Social networking services provide computer users the ability to establish relations with other computer users over the Internet for the purpose of interacting, sharing information, and communicating. Certain social networking services allow participants to share multimedia content and post comments upon the shared multimedia content that are viewable by other participants in the online community. For instance, YOUTUBE® allows users to post videos accessible to the public or selected groups of users, so that other users may view the videos and provide commentary about the posted videos. FLICKR® allows users to share photos with the general public or select private groups of users, where users may comment upon the photos. Some online services, such as IP.COM's Intellectual Property Library, provide for the sharing of inventive or creative content by allowing inventors to publish their research activity for the purposes of establishing a prior art database. (YOUTUBE is a registered trademark of Google, Inc.; FLICKR is a registered trademark of Yahoo! Inc.; and IP.COM is a registered trademark of IP.COM, LLC).
Notwithstanding the prevalence of social networking services and sites allowing users to interact, communicate, and share information, there is a need in the art for a social networking community that allows creators of artworks and inventions to share those works and interact so as to encourage further innovation and commercialization in a manner that is cognizant of the need to protect intellectual property rights arising from inventive and artistic works.